


the rungs of me be under, under you

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 12:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3488615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous asked: DUDE! Can you write a fic about that last thing u just posted? Like Sarah falling asleep on a couch and Helena picking her up and taking her to bed and Sarah snuggling into her neck. i would write it, but i don't think i could do it justice in the same way you could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the rungs of me be under, under you

Helena comes back late, footsteps that rock to their sides and edges to be quiet and the slow slow click of a key in the lock. She’s still not used to  _having_  a key, the way its sharp edges rub up against her fingertips. She is not used to having a place to belong. 

When the door creak-creak-creaks open, Helena’s met with dark and silence and a soft flickering light from across the room. She steps in, soft now, and sees: the television on, and Sarah asleep. Sarah falls asleep on the couch a lot, if there is no one there; Helena wonders if there is something about a bed that frightens Sarah. To Helena beds are sometimes too soft, too big. She doesn’t know if Sarah feels the same. 

Usually when Helena opens the door Sarah wakes up, but tonight she’s all curled in on herself on the couch, small like Helena-in-a-cage. Helena’s neck hurts, looking at Sarah there, because it doesn’t look very comfortable. The  _couch_ is not very comfortable, lumps and springs. The bed would be better, probably. The bed is what Sarah deserves. 

But here is the larger question of deserving. Sarah deserves a bed, but Sarah also deserves sleep, and Helena has to swallow a terrified fluttering from her heart at the thought of being the one to wake Sarah up. She doesn’t know what to do. This happens all the time, with credit cards and shelving groceries, getting dressed and limping with bleeding limbs through the barbed wire of conversations, and Helena hates it. She wishes they had a mother, here — a  _real_ mother, not Amelia, who was nothing but a womb swallowed by skin — who could take care of Sarah for Helena and make everything alright.

If only. But there is no one here but a movie playing in soft black and white and the twitching muscles of Sarah’s forehead when she dreams. And Helena, and Helena’s hands, and Helena’s pockets holding Helena’s hands.

Well.  _Well—_

Helena’s body decides for her, crossing the room, and she pulls her lips between her teeth to ground herself. Her heart hurts, sitting backwards in her chest, at how small Sarah looks on the couch and how much Helena wants her to be alright. She crouches, slips her arms under Sarah’s weight, pulls her up like cradling a child. She is heavy heavy  _heavy_  but Helena carried a sniper rifle at seventeen across three countries. Helena dragged Sarah’s weight into a river, wrestled Sarah’s weight off her back to slam her head against a wall, carried Sarah’s weight to a shallow grave. Sarah is heavy, but once upon a time the two of them were the same weight and so Helena can bear it. 

Helena read a story, once, about a man who held up the world. She thinks about it as she carries her world into the back bedroom, but stops thinking about it when Sarah makes a low noise in the back of her throat and turns, buries her face into the skin of Helena’s shoulder. She slurs some murmuring sound and tucks her face in closer, her eyelashes fluttering against the skin above Helena’s heart. 

Helena holds her breath and pleads with her heart to stop beating, so it doesn’t wake Sarah up. It doesn’t. Helena’s heart is bad at doing what she tells it to. Sarah stirs a little, and Helena can feel the brush of Sarah’s eyelids as she opens her eyes, feel the puff of Sarah’s breath when Sarah slurs, “ _Helena?_ " all confused and soft. 

"Shh," Helena says, nudges open the door with her foot, toes the covers back so she can let Sarah’s weight roll from her arms (again). Sarah blinks at her from the bed, groggy, and Helena pulls the covers over her, and everything will be alright. Sarah’s eyes have closed when Helena was covering her, and Helena stops to look at her: she looks like a version of Helena who is not afraid. She looks like all the good things Helena could not be, cut out with a knife. Helena swallows a surge of love that pushes its way up her throat and turns to go out of the bedroom, back to the couch. 

"Stay here," comes a voice from behind Helena, and she stops—

—turns around. One of Sarah’s eyes is slitted open to look at her, a spot of light in the dark. She doesn’t say anything else, just waits. 

Slowly, Helena toes off her shoes, walks around the bed and lifts the covers up so she can crawl inside. The bed is not as big or cold when Sarah is in it; Helena dreams her heartbeat shakes the bed, gives Helena a rhythm to breathe to. 

It doesn’t, probably. But Helena’s heartbeat moves her and it’s enough; the last thing she hears before dreams take her is her breathing, or Sarah’s breathing, or both of them breathing in unison to sing her to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Get a little closer, let fold  
> Cut open my sternum, and pull  
> My little ribs around you  
> The lungs of me be crowns over you  
> \--"Fineshrine," Purity Ring
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos + comments if you enjoyed!


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